


The Way of It

by babykid528



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies RPF
Genre: Adultery, Angst, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 19:05:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babykid528/pseuds/babykid528
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tom falls hard and fast and unexpectedly. That's just the way life goes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Way of It

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FooFighter0234](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FooFighter0234/gifts).



> Hello, dear recipient!! Happiest of yuletides! :-D 
> 
> You said "anything goes" for this pairing, and this is what happened. I hope you like it.
> 
> (Many special thanks to my excellent beta, [raedbard](http://archiveofourown.org/users/raedbard/profile), for going at this with his red pen!! It made all the difference, bb! <3)

Kenneth schedules a lunch. A meet and greet kind of ordeal, so Tom and this Chris guy can get to know one another a bit. After all, they need to play brothers for the next eighteen months and forever years. (Tom knows how these things work, or he’s been told, anyway: Superhero franchises never end.)

 

Tom prays to whatever deity might be listening to make sure Chris isn’t a gigantic prick. He has no idea what he’ll do if he is.

 

Chris, of course, isn’t.

 

Instead, he’s pleasant, charming, and unbearably funny. They couldn’t get along any better if they were real brothers. In fact, they get along far too well for the brothers in this particular film: they’re told to downplay their easy camaraderie.

 

They listen to Kenneth and do as they’re told, of course. But between takes, Chris always claps Tom on the shoulder and smiles warm and bright at him. Tom can’t help smiling back.

 

***

 

It’s both alarming and not, the way they form an immediate alliance. Some crazy 'us versus the world' kind of thing.

 

They’re never without one another, never far from the other’s side. Stuck in one another’s magnetic pull.

 

Even when they head off set and get a meal, they slide into the booth beside one another.

 

Tom swears there was a time when he used to be one person. Now he’s half of a pair.

 

It should be unsettling, but then Chris wraps his fingers around Tom’s bicep, digging them in just enough to draw Tom’s attention away from his thoughts and back to the present.

 

When Chris laughs and presses their shoulders together, Tom can’t say he minds this strange turn of events all that much.

 

***

 

Some people dream in color. Others dream in black and white. Tom dreams in taste and touch.

 

He dreams of moments where pale skin raises in angry welts beneath his blunt nails. Of soothing the abused flesh with his tongue. Of thick muscles contracting as he presses his palm against abdomen. Of sharp hips he can’t resist sinking his teeth into.

 

One of Tom’s hands tangles in the idea of long, blond hair against his pillow and he presses his body into the twisted blankets as he whimpers and thrusts and spills across an imaginary hand, the ghost of a name slipping from his lips.

 

He wakes up the next morning feeling cold and sticky and clutching his bed sheets looking for a warm body that’s never been there.

 

***

 

One minute Tom cared about Chris. The next minute he loved.

 

As if taking on the role of an iconic comic villain wasn’t risky enough, his heart had to go and get itself all mixed up in this whole stupid mess of a life decision. Branding itself with Chris’ name and laugh and stupid smiling face.

 

It’s not the most foolish thing Tom’s ever done. But it’s up there.

 

He can’t say why or how he knows, but he’s certain these growing feelings will be his ruin.

 

***

 

The tension mounts and escalates for weeks. It weighs heavily in their silences. Heavier in their words. It makes their once casual touches bruise.

 

They’re bound to reach the breaking point any day now, so Tom just sits back and waits for it to happen. He’s helpless against its inevitability; too tired to fight it, but too cowardly to spur it on.

 

***

 

They’re at some party for something or someone on set. He can’t remember why he’s there. All he can do is stare at Chris, open and obvious and not caring that everyone can see, because he’s so far gone it doesn’t even matter. He has no idea how long he’s been ignoring Kat. Or how long he’s been standing so still.

 

He can’t remember anything but Chris now.

 

Chris’ fingers hurt when they wrap around Tom’s wrist, causing Tom to flinch. Chris just tugs him along, out of his head, and out of the room.

 

Tom’s sure Chris is about to tell him off, yell at him for staring like a creep. Instead, Chris presses Tom up against the wall of the private space he’s dragged them to, and stares back.

 

A multitude of feelings are written in Chris’ eyes and even if Tom wanted to speak, in that moment, he couldn’t.

 

Because everyday since the day they met has been leading up to this.

 

Cold fingers pressing and caressing hot skin. Both of them so pale in the darkness. The sound of Chris gasping as Tom touches him for the first time. The sob Tom tries to swallow when Chris touches him in turn. It’s rushed, fumbling, better than any fantasy could ever be, and it feels like it might end before it’s even really begun.

 

Tom’s not sure if this is what drowning feels like, or being saved. Maybe a little of both. So he closes his eyes, fights for air, and hangs on tight through it all.

 

***

 

Sometimes the glare off of Chris’ ring finger catches Tom’s attention when he most wants to ignore it. Like when Chris’ fingers are tangled with Elsa’s on the tabletop during the birthday dinner she insisted they treat Tom to.

 

Chris’ hands are so much bigger than hers, but fuck, do they look perfect together. Matching rings. Matching smiles.

 

Tom doesn’t belong here. Everything that’s happened between Chris and Tom certainly doesn’t belong here.

 

He’s struck by how different but the same Chris can seem, all at once. He wishes he had time to mourn the loss of him, but Tom never really had him. And that’s a fact he can’t quite face just yet.

 

So, he forces himself to smile and laugh throughout dinner. An Oscar-worthy performance if ever there was one.

 

The goodbye at the end of the evening is the most bittersweet exchange Tom’s ever been a party to.

 

***

 

 

Life, they say, is a series of meetings and partings.

 

Tom can’t be sure who “they” are, exactly, but he knows they’ve hit the nail on the head with that cliché. It’s one of life’s most painful truths. 


End file.
